Ragen Chastain

You may remember Maria Kang from her fifteen minutes of fame a couple of years ago when she put some time and effort into looking like the cultural stereotype of beauty, had some success at that, then took a picture of herself wearing gym clothes with her three sons. Which is, of course, her prerogative and completely fine. But then she couldn't resist shaming people who made different choices (or made the same choices but had different outcomes) by adding the caption "What's Your Excuse?"

You know what’s more “ostracizing” than being called plus-size? Actually BEING plus-size and unable to find clothes that fit you and that you like.
Plus-size people do not have the same choices as those who wear straight sizes — not in style, quality, price point, or availability. THAT'S ostracizing.

Mansplaining is rampant in our culture, and nowhere is it mansplain-ier than when men explain women’s bodies to us.

Giles Coren writes a column about fatherhood for Esquire UK. His most recent column is full of fat-shaming including shaming is own son.

One has to wonder what they would have done if they had been trying to do it with a “mean spirit.”

Fat is not a feeling you have. Fat is a body size you are. Fat people have as many different feelings about our bodies as thin people do. Suggesting that feeling bad about your body means that you are “feeling fat” is fat shaming AF, and it adds to the ceaseless fatphobic messages that permeate our society.

It’s a dangerous and challenging time for many of us to have a body in the United States. There are things we can do to not only love our bodies but give them our support during the era of the bigoted, fat shaming, twitter tantrum throwing man-baby who is, for now, our president.

Keep working, keep pushing, live so that these people call you attention seeking activists every day. You are making the world better.

People are using #TheySaid to tell their stories of experiencing body shaming. Sally Bergesen kicked things off by talking about her own memory of body shaming, and hundreds of Twitter responses echoed her story.

So this new line by Forever 21 goes up to “3X” which they’ve defined as a size 18. Forever 21 may be better than some in terms of carrying larger sizes, and they may want to “celebrate fashion for all sizes,” but let’s be clear that they aren’t even close to creating fashion for all sizes.